Margarity Kerns recently published a very nice article at SQL Server Central on using hash functions to detect changes in rows during the data warehouse load ETL process. On the discussion page for the article I noticed a lot of the same old arguments Read More...

This is my contribution to the T-SQL Tuesday blog party, started by Adam Machanic and hosted this month by Aaron Nelson . Aaron announced this month's topic is "reporting" so I figured I'd throw a blog up on a reporting topic I've been interested in for Read More...

Ask about nearly any kind of SQL-based date calculation in the newsgroups , and you'll likely get responses that include use of an auxiliary calendar table . It's a really good idea, and something I highly recommend to anyone who has to do date-based Read More...

Based on feedback from the community ( https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/522123/sql-server-2008-service-pack-2 and https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/522122/service-pack-4-for-sql-server-2005 ), Microsoft has Read More...

New Jersey SQL Server User Group (NJSQL) is bringing SQLSaturday #39 to NYC on April 24, 2010! The free all-day training event will be hosted by Microsoft at their Midtown Manhattan offices. The speaker line-up is growing fast—if you'd like to present, Read More...

A common question on the newsgroups is "how do you encrypt data in a .NET [or other] client application and then decrypt it on SQL Server [or vice versa]?" I actually ran down my list of answers to someone who asked this in the newsgroups a few weeks Read More...

Ahhh, attention to detail. I misread Adam's T-SQL Tuesday rules and posted early. So here I go again :) This time the puzzle is how to add and update metadata via extended properties in the database with minimal headaches. SQL Server supports a great Read More...